[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 12037-12038]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              GLOBAL AIDS

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, last Thursday and early Friday morning, 
the Senate was in session for I believe 17 hours, and it took 36 
rollcall votes. Many of us arrived at our homes at 1:30 or 2 in the 
morning. I had trouble sleeping despite the hour because of what 
happened on that day. I want to describe something that has bothered me 
all weekend.
  In the middle of discussing the tax vote that came to us from the 
Finance Committee, the majority leader brought up the global AIDS bill. 
I guess it was about 10 o'clock at night. Those of us who prepared to 
offer amendments were told by the majority leader twice on the floor of 
the Senate that we would be able to offer our amendments and they would 
defeat them. Understand that this is a global AIDS bill that was done 
in committee, and none of us who do not serve on that committee had an 
opportunity to deal with that subject.
  Yet we were told in the Senate we would be able to offer our 
amendments and they would defeat them. This was about 10 o'clock at 
night. We were, by the way, at that moment debating a $430 billion or 
$450 billion tax cut. And I proposed an amendment to the global AIDS 
bill to spend $250 million--one-fourth of a billion dollars--to address 
a famine, particularly in central and sub-Saharan Africa, that 
threatens 11 million people. But before we had a debate about the 
substance of that, we were told: Your amendments will be defeated. Why? 
Because they are not a priority.
  We had already passed the level of food aid that was proposed in my 
amendment previously. That $250 million was already passed by the 
Senate in the omnibus bill and taken out by the House of 
Representatives in conference. But we were told we didn't have the 
capability in the Senate to do it last Thursday. So we had a record 
vote. I lost 49 to 51.
  Just so we understand this is not about some abstract theory, let me 
read Nicholas Kristof's piece in the New York Times of May 13.

       Ladawi is a 16-month-old girl with twigs for limbs, 
     blotched skin, labored breathing, eyes that roll back and 
     skin stretched tautly over shoulder blades that look as if 
     they belong to a survivor of Auschwitz. She is so 
     malnourished that she cannot brush away the flies that land 
     on her eyes, and she does not react when a medical trainee 
     injects drugs into her hip in a race to save her life.
       ``She's concerned only with trying to breathe,'' says the 
     trainee, the closest thing to a doctor at a remote medical 
     center here in southern Ethiopia. ``Most likely she will not 
     survive.''

  I don't understand this. I just do not understand. We have people 
dying, children dying, and we have substantial food in this country and 
the most productive farmers in the world. They are told at the grain 
elevator that food has no value. If you produce it in such abundance, 
it has no value. And then a young girl in Boricha, Ethiopia, lies on 
her bed dying because she doesn't have food.
  I served on the Hunger Committee when I served in the House. I have 
traveled to many spots in the world to refugee camps. I have seen 
desperate hunger. I have held in my arms children who were dying 
because they didn't have enough to eat. We live in a world of plenty--
at least here in the United States. Obesity is a major problem. A 
substantial part of our country is on a diet. Our farmers can't make a 
living because they are told their food has no value. Yet we have 11 
million people at risk. This Senate says no to the food aid that needs 
to go to those kids, to help those kids. I just do not understand it.
  Let me read further from the Nicholas Kristof piece:

       We've all been distracted by Iraq, but an incipient famine 
     in the Horn of Africa has been drastically worsening just in 
     the last few weeks. It has garnered almost no attention in 
     the West, partly because it's not generally realized that 
     people are already dying here in significant numbers. But 
     they are. And unless the West mobilizes further assistance 
     immediately to Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia, the toll could 
     be catastrophic. . . .
       ``We've been overwhelmed by this, especially in the last 
     three weeks,'' said Tigist Esatu, a nurse at the Yirba Health 
     Center, crowded with mothers carrying starving children. 
     ``Some families come and say, `We've lost two children 
     already, three children already, so you must save this 
     one.'''

  He continues:

       Since weapons of mass destruction haven't turned up so far 
     in Iraq, there's been a revisionist suggestion that the 
     American invasion was worthwhile because of humanitarian 
     gains for the liberated Iraqi people. Fair enough. But as 
     long as we're willing to send hundreds of thousands of troops 
     to help Iraqis, what about offering much more modest 
     assistance to save the children dying here?
       ``How is it that we routinely accept a level of suffering 
     and hopelessness in Africa that we would never accept in any 
     other part of the world?'' asks James Morris, the executive 
     director of the World Food Program. . . .
       Fair enough. But as long as we're willing to send hundreds 
     of thousands of troops to help Iraqis, what about offering 
     much more modest assistance to save the children dying here?

  Later in the article he quotes a mother:

       ``Now I worry about my other children,'' said Tadilech 
     Yuburo, a young woman who lost one child last month and has 
     three left. In her village, Duressa, population 300, five 
     children have died in the last month. In nearby Falamu, 
     population 400, six children have died. This famine has not 
     yet registered on the world's conscience.

  I offered an amendment to provide some food aid which we have in 
abundance. We have plenty of food aid to give. I offered an amendment 
at 10, 11 at night. We didn't have the time to do that, didn't have the 
willingness to do that. We didn't have the votes to do that. We were 
way too busy providing tax cuts, the majority of which will go to upper 
income Americans.
  I had a friend who died of a car crash in 1981. He was a wonderful 
man, a singer, named Harry Chapin, who dedicated most of his life to 
fighting rural hunger. Harry wrote a song I want to read that describes 
why I feel so passionately about this. The song is called ``The 
Shortest Story.''

       I am born today. The sun burns its promise in my eyes. 
     Momma strikes me and I draw a breath to cry. Far above a 
     cloud tumbles softly through the sky. It is now my seventh 
     day. I taste the hunger and I cry. Brother and sister cling 
     to momma's side. She squeezes her breast, but it has nothing 
     to provide. Someone weeps. I fall asleep. It is 20 days 
     today. Momma does not hold me anymore. I open my mouth but I 
     am too weak to cry. Far above a bird slowly crawls across the 
     sky. Why is there nothing left to do but die?

  Those were lyrics by the late Harry Chapin. Harry was a terrific 
friend. He dedicated the proceeds from one-half of his concerts every 
year to fight world hunger. He used to say, if one night 45,000 people 
died of hunger in New Jersey, it would make headlines around the world, 
giant headlines in every paper in the world. But the winds of hunger 
blow every day, every hour, every minute, and 45,000 people, mostly 
children, die every day, and it doesn't make the newspaper.

[[Page 12038]]

  Now we have a gripping famine in a part of the world that some of us 
believe we have a moral responsibility to address in a much more 
aggressive way than we have been willing to address previously. Yet a 
relatively small amendment I offered on Thursday was defeated by two 
votes, and I was told before I offered it: Go ahead and offer your 
amendment. We will defeat it. And this was before they knew what the 
amendment was about.
  That is not the kind of priority you would expect from the Senate. I 
regret very much that we passed this global AIDS bill and did not 
attach the $250 million in food aid to which the Senate had previously 
agreed. We don't have much time if we care about world hunger. If we 
care about saving these children, if we care about doing what we need 
to do, what our responsibility would call us to do at this moment, then 
we must regroup and pass legislation of the type I offered Thursday 
night.
  Again, it was hard to sleep, and this weekend I thought a lot about 
that, wondering why was the Senate so much more interested in providing 
tax cuts than it was in providing assistance to those starving in other 
parts of the world.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Virginia.

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